Odmazda

Dear Mr. Kirev,

When Socialist Yugoslav state was alive and kicking, the people from Vardar Macedonia used their citizenship as identification speaking with nonspecialists in Western Europe. This citizenship was Yugoslavian. This was the general point, although some people from Vardar Macedonia were specified more profound their country and even some of them had their societies - Bulgarian (in Belgium), Macedonistic (in Sweden) etc. Unfortunately, for the ordinary people in Western Europe, the name "Macedonia" wasn't very familiar then - at least if we are talking about the contemporary (then) states. Their state then was Yugoslavia.

Best regards,

Radoslav B.

Though the subject didn't appeal to me at first, I loved this movie. A young man has to choose between love and hate. He carries with him two generations of revenge. The outcome of what started out as a seemingly 'impossible' friendship between the Christian Mittre and the Muslim Karahasan. It is not the hate that is shown, but the love and the way misunderstandings and interpretation of facts can unleash a series of situations which none is able to stop at a certain point. It is not a movie about evil against good, it shows the good side in each. And the strength of family ties, but also the weight of them. Very moving, very beautiful, a pearl.

The film exploits the far-off Balkan customs of revenge which is preserved in present days mostly in Northren Albania and it is an attempt to impress the foreign public with history which is not very profound. Behind this ordinary Balkan history in the movie (a history about vengeance and love), there are a dose of propaganda of present Macedonian doctrine. The authors of this production transfered a part of the present political realities in Republic of Macedonia upon the history and talking about some Ethnic Macedonians, different from Bulgarians in the very beginning of 20 century. Furthermore the film is not very correct with the dates (years). If you compare the dates in the movie you will see that some of the persons must be very old (but they aren't) or the action takes place in the years when the Republic of Macedonia didn't exists and the answer of question "Where are you from?" was "Yugoslavia" (in the movie isn't thus)... From the historical point of view this movie is a mess.

A very interesting movie. Yet after 90 minutes too many characters appear and everything changes when one of them gets killed. Who is who? It's really confusing, especially near the ending some half hour later. Furthermore it's again a genius example of Macedonian world cinema. Great film.

I didn't watch the whole movie yet, but the fact is that due to the division of Macedonia since 1913, it is quite possible that people were using Macedonia as a country of origin even in the times when Yugoslav federation was alive and kicking... As lots of Croat nationalists and Serb nationalists were using Croatia and Serbia as their homelands even that Yugoslavia existed. They even had separate expatriate clubs in Sweden or Australia.

Just watch the movie and don't try to judge if my grandfather felt Macedonian or Serbian or Bulgarian. I know that he was Macedonian. Maybe he spoke Serbian or Bulgarian but Irish people or Scotts do speak English but are not English...

Your denial of the "Macedonianship" just shows that "Revenge" (the movie title) is still alive on the Balkans.